Leo awoke at to find Jemma had already left. No kiss his morning, that was... weird...
She always kissed him, every morning. What had changed today? Maybe...
Nah. No he was being paranoid. She'd been herself last night, he'd seen it in her face when he'd kissed her forehead in the lab. It was Jemma.
'It doesn't mean what you think it means,' he told himself. 'She's sick remember, she doesn't want you to catch it.'
Stupid cold infecting Jemma and making her achy and icky and contagious. Stupid cold not infecting him too so she could give him kisses.
He gazed up at the clock, 7:20. An unpleasant bolt of alarm zapped him as he realized he was late.
He dressed rapidly, pulling his pant leg out of his sock as he dashed out of the room to the kitchen.
Jemma, Trip, May and Coulson appeared to be done breakfast however Skye was placing two slices of bread in the toaster. No time to wait his turn.
Cereal it was then, he thought grumpily as he poured himself a bowl. Toast was much tastier and warm.
He sat beside Jemma and she shuffled away again. He was seriously considering looking into a cure for the common cold.
'Sorry,' she mouthed, seeing his face and he smiled at her, shaking his head. The cold was her enemy too, they would need to collaborate to take it down.
Toast flew through the air onto Skye's plate and Jemma let out a squeak of surprise.
"Really Simmons?" Trip teased on her other side. "I thought you were done jumping at flying objects."
"Oh, well... You surprised me." she giggled.
'Did she sound nervous?' he wondered as Skye apologized. No that wasn't Jemma's nervous voice, she must be stuffed up or something.
Poor Jemma all sick and achy and stuffed up and bravely holding back from human contact for everyone else's sake. He should help her.
Leo coughed a few times and sniffed as if his nose was full. He then blew it loudly on a napkin, mumbling an apology when everyone stared at him.
"I must be sick," he told them, glancing at Jemma who raised her eyebrows at him. He coughed again for good measure but she didn't seem to understand.
He gave up and poked at his cereal dejectedly, glancing longingly at Skye's toast.
"Trade you," Skye whispered, sliding her toast towards him across the table.
"Oh... well I don't want to get you sick..." he objected, keeping his cover.
She rolled her eyes at him, "I'll take my chances Sneezy. I can't take those big sad eyes on my food." she chuckled, digging into his cereal while he crunched the toast. Simmons didn't scold him this time.
Skye hadn't believed him. Maybe she was secretly telepathic as well as telekinetic, his performance had been spectacular.
Jemma was still about a foot away though...
He tried to appear happy with the toast which he really was grateful for.
/-/-/
B21 listened to the progress the team had made, they were quickly becoming a serious problem. May and Trip had managed to find a witness who'd seen the shapeshifters drive off and Skye had hacked trafic cameras to follow the license plate number Coulson had procured from the security camera's of the Cryogenics facility. They knew where her creators were.
Well, at least they had an idea. They had tracked the vehicle to the edge of the forest, however they didn't know where the building was. It was somewhere in the many miles of woodland. They were sending Trip, Skye, Fitz and herself to search through it.
Not an entire disaster, however the engineer had found a way to track the pattern of electrical signalling which the shapeshifters gave off, they might be able to find the building. Then they would call Coulson and May who would be flying over the woods in a small plane, searching by air.
Perhaps it would have been worth killing him. They hadn't even discussed how the team's knowledge had been communicated to the rest of Shield.
The chances of them finding the building were high unless she found a way to interfere. It wasn't the main facility but it was important enough and she needed to stop them.
She closed her eyes, pretending to be drowse, and re-established the link with Simmons. She was met with immediate, powerful resistance.
'Oh stop it,' B21 scolded. 'I don't have time for your ridiculous games.'
'I'm not playing games,' she snarled assaulting her with a tide of fury and hatred.
Simmons' mind ignited like a loud, angry flame. It was filled with pain, despair and a horrible feeling of emptiness. It was burning B21 up inside to keep the connection open and she shut it quickly before her discomfort showed on her face.
Something was seriously wrong with this human. It must be defective she decided. Not that she'd connected with many of them, this was only her second.
Whatever the case, Simmons had obviously broken at some point, B21 suspected a faulty neural synchronization net.
It looked like she was on her own.
/-/-/
Jemma held the uncut key in the palm of her hand. The door had a lock on both sides of it, she could see it when she poked the top of her head from her sweater.
The abomination tried to re-establish the connection and she fought it with everything she had. That thing was not going to see that she had a way out.
It told her to stop playing games which had infuriated her. It thought this was a game to her? This waste of metal thought that it looming over the person she loved with every part of herself and debating whether or not to kill him was the same thing as playing Operation?
Did she think it was a game that Leo was dead? That he'd never feel happy, or have a satisfyingly wonderful idea, or make a silly joke ever again.
She could come up with a game. Let's play suck the shapeshifter into the vacuum it's left in my soul and let it rust into nothing.
Jemma was losing control of herself, sobbing and shaking again as she was hit with waves of anguish and loneliness. It was a minute before she realized B21 had broken the connection.
She had chased it out. The damn piece of junk couldn't handle her emotions so it had left. She almost laughed. It had given her a powerful weapon to use against it, and though she wished it hadn't, she intended to fight with it.
That and the tools Leo had left for her.
She reached for the localized EMP she still had in her pocket. They really hadn't searched her very well. Didn't everyone pack a small kit of gadgets when they went to buy donuts? It was always good to be prepared, especially with shapeshifters lurking around, and preparation was something at which Jemma excelled.
There hadn't been much of a point in using it until now. Even if she took out the cameras watching her she'd still be locked inside. Now, however, she had a key. Or potentially.
'It'll work,' she told herself putting her faith in Leo's gift.
She popped out of her sweater, hit the button on the EMP and rushed towards the door, pendant in hand.
Carefully, she placed it in the keyhole. It shimmered again and she turned it slowly, hearing a click as the door unlocked.
This was definitely the most incredible necklace in the world and it was made all the more precious because Leo had given it to her. She tucked it safely under her sweater as she opened the door.
She exited into a short hallway which led her to a room on the left filled with people buzzing around and trying to fix the broken view of her cell.
No one noticed her in the chaos and she had time to grab a gun which was lying on a nearby counter. She debated killing them, shooting out at least a few of them. They had let that thing kill Leo despite her pleas, despite the fact that he was good person who deserved better.
She hadn't escaped for revenge though, she had escaped to stop what happened to Leo from ever happening again, so she took the gun and quietly moved on.
As she reached the exit an alarm blared and thick metal walls began dropping down over the doors. The building was going into lockdown.
Jemma sprinted as fast as he could and rolled under the falling wall, out the door her momentum pushed open. The edge of her stretched sweater caught between the wall and the ground. She swore but thought quickly and pulled out her marvelous pendant.
It morphed into a tiny knife and she cut herself free. More like a sonic screwdriver than a tardis.
She dashed away from the noise and the shouts of guards and disappeared into the woods.
/-/-/
B21 was partnered with the engineer, who would be incredibly irritating if she could feel things like that. She as quickly discovering that she could.
He kept hinting that he was ill and looking over at her expectantly. What did he want some chicken noodle soup? They were on a mission, he should just buck it up. That was what she was allegedly doing.
She wished she'd been partnered with the quiet one, the serious woman who seemed to be one of their leaders. May was her name.
He coughed again and she thought that anyone else really would have been preferable.
She had no idea how to deal with him and was becoming progressively more worried that she wasn't behaving in a way he was anticipating.
B21 reluctantly reopened the connection with Simmons again as she pretended to look at the tablet which was scanning the woods for shapeshifter's electrical signals.
She'd put hers on a different frequency and warned the others to do the same however some of the equipment in the facility had the same pattern and could not be changed. They were getting closer.
Simmons fought again, sending that horrible burning emptiness over, however this time B21 fought back.
'Why are you struggling so much?' she wondered, prying into Simmons' head.
It was incredibly unpleasant, however she managed to fish out some information. The human had escaped and she was in these woods somewhere. B21 could easily track her with the signal shared between them so, after being sure the annoying engineer was not paying attention, she slipped away to find her.
/-/-/
"I think I've got something," Leo announced, lifting his eyes from his tablet and expecting to see Jemma.
She wasn't there.
"Jemma?" he called. She didn't answer and he his insides chilled with fear. "Jemma?!" he shouted.
Could she have been kidnapped? Or... kidnapped? He'd been right there, wouldn't he have noticed?
"Jemma!" he screamed, running around frantically.
"What? Did you need something?" she asked, appearing out of the woods and sounding slightly exasperated as if he were the one who'd just done something irrational.
"Where were you?" he exclaimed, upset she hadn't said anything before wandering off. This wasn't exactly a trip to an amusement park, she could have been hurt, or trapped. It wasn't like her to be irresponsible like this. It wasn't like her to wander off without communicating...
"Oh, I thought I saw something," she answered breezily, completely ignoring the distress in his voice. She caught his expression and smiled apologetically. "It was nothing, no need to worry. C'mon sweetheart, we'd better get going."
Sweetheart? What had he done to get a sweetheart? She didn't call him that because she felt bad. She wouldn't use the term against him to melt him when he was mad at her.
It was a detail in a long list of details that weren't quite right.
She hadn't kissed him this morning and he'd thought it was out of concern for him, not wanting to get him sick but she didn't look sick now and there were clues, little things that didn't seem right. Her jumping at Skye's powers, not understanding his hints being sick (she would have at least told him to stop.)
On top of that, her calling him sweetheart had had no effect on him just now, which wasn't right. When Jemma called him sweetheart it was like warm sunshine melting his heart made of toffee. But that wasn't sunshine and his heart remained solid.
It was the way she'd looked at him, he realized, as she'd said it. When Jemma said it her eyes shone with unquestionable love as deep and strong and unbreakable as his love was for her.
Whoever this was had not looked at him that way. Whoever this was was not Jemma.
"Are you one of them?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "Are you a shapeshifter?"
She frowned at him, eyes narrowed and shaking her head like he was being crazy. "Why would you ask me something like that?" she answered. "It's me, you know it is."
'I know it's not,' he thought, fearful and furious. 'Wrong answer you stupid, poorly designed piece of junk.'
Suddenly he actually did feel sick because if this was a shapeshifter then where was Jemma?
/-/-/
Fun Background
Thank you so much for all the great reviews, follows, likes and reads. You are all incredible.
Special thanks to notapepper for helping me sort through my ideas for B21 :).
Congratulations to notapepper and flute125 for guessing correctly about the key! You win an imaginary shapeshifter necklace. Use it wisely (or just have fun, whatever).
The Fringe reference is the game Operation. It is played throughout the series by the characters and Olivia plays it on robot heart Peter at one point (not so fun, touch the sides and bad things happen)
Also I think B21's symptoms are more flu-like looking back. But it could be a cold too. She wasn't even really sick so maybe it doesn't matter haha.
I kid you not, the first time I spelled drowse it was drowzee like the pokemon. Oh my spelling...
The next chapter is pretty much all written and so should be up soon. It was going to be one ginormous chapter but I figured I'd separate it into two to make reading and my own editing/ keeping track of where everything is easier.
